Thanksgiving Roundup: Apple Buys Land, New MacBooks in April, App Store Sales, Black Friday Prices

[imwoblin]

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There is a reason Apple is purchasing all this land in N.C. and setting up cloud based computing. Apple wants all media, whether it's streaming video to watch, installing software or storage based in their "cloud".

 

[Ronlap]

The 2006 purchase was the old Tandem Computers campus. Tandem was purchased by Compaq and Compaq was purchased by HP. It's since been filled in, but Tandem buildings 1, 2, and 3 framed a courtyard with the first corporate swimming pool in the Silicon Valley. We also had tennis and basketball courts behind the buildings.

 

[arcite]

Optical is not going anywhere for a long while. No matter how much people are willing to go DLC on the interwebs and have co-ownership with Apple, MS, Sony whoever the company; sorry they will have no say in how many times I can download anything, no stupid ass activations. F that. I think most forget about the other 80% of the world that will keep using optical for a LONG time.

With that said, I have not used my optical drive in my MBP for over three months. Might only use it 4-5 times a year but I'd much rather do things that way than use an APP store where I own the content less to a large degree. I do see the MBP losing the optical drive though, all of them. 13' will become the air. So I will just have to upgrade next year to a different laptop manufacturer. I like choice.

At least the Imacs will keep them for a while so I will just grab one of those perhaps. USB 3.0 and blu ray would be nice on those next year.

Congrats to those who push for DLC, you'll see in the future what you should be fighting against.

I really don't get this attitude. The first iMac got rid of the floppy drive and there were many detractors. The CD is mostly antiquated...the DVD is next. A DVD has a capacity of what? around 5 gigs? The future is clearly SSD and Apple will most assuredly make the leap to eliminate optical drives when they see fit and the rest of the world will follow shortly after.

The fact is, our storage needs are increasing exponentially every year; optical media simply can't keep up. It's gotta go!

 

[arcite]

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There is a reason Apple is purchasing all this land in N.C. and setting up cloud based computing. Apple wants all media, whether it's streaming video to watch, installing software or storage based in their "cloud".

Apple wants to be a middle-man, how is this different than Google's business model?

 

[435713]

I really don't get this attitude. The first iMac got rid of the floppy drive and there were many detractors. The CD is mostly antiquated...the DVD is next. A DVD has a capacity of what? around 5 gigs? The future is clearly SSD and Apple will most assuredly make the leap to eliminate optical drives when they see fit and the rest of the world will follow shortly after.

The fact is, our storage needs are increasing exponentially every year; optical media simply can't keep up. It's gotta go!

If it really is going then I better see some form of solid state media I can buy in store. I rather have stuff in my hand than in Apple's hands, or any other company doing the DLC. Either way if in 5 years it all takes off there are other means of acquiring YOUR media on a selected format and not a server somewhere. I hope piracy runs rampant when this supposed revolution starts and lawsuits up the ass when people cant re download what they paid for and thought they owned.

Might be paranoid maybe they will offer no BS and have you able to make a backup and then I would be all good.

 

[Mr. Wonderful]

Macbook Pro without an optical drive? Hmm, I don't like the sound of that.

Just buy an external that's faster than the current Superdrives. Win-win.

 

[paul4339]

..
As other posters have mentioned, surely if the superdrive was dropped and SSD was implemented, how many "pro" features would still distinguish the 13" from the MBA and persuade people to buy one?
...

Backlit keyboard! ... just kidding...

I see where you are coming from... what's the difference between a "pro" notebook from other models.

Well I guess:
MBA should have greater emphasis mobility - compactness, built in 3G chip, batteries, etc

MBP should place more emphasis on power, good video, storage, more options, etc

Macbook should emphasize value - lower price (less expensive parts/materials)

IF this is the case, then the optical drive should remain... BUT I think Apple will get rid of it to offset some the costs of an SSD; leaving the superdrive as an external option at an extra cost. (besides the faster that optical drives go away the more movies and software downloads will go thru their online store!)

I believe that profits will rule at the end of day.


P.

 

[DELLsFan]

I guess they might have those external Super drives too. Hopefully they'll include it free, because it is a Macbook "Pro".

Not a bad idea though, if you aren't the one who needs an optical drive all the time, everywhere you go.
_________________________________________________________________

It looks like the new MBPs will be just on time for 10.7. Should be pretty beast

I kinda like the idea too. I install software or use the optical drive so infrequently, I could live with ext drives or remote disk technology.

I get excited about the new laptop releases, but I'm still not impressed at the fleecing of consumers with regard to SSD pricing. It's been long enough since they were released. The prices can and should come down drastically across the board.

 

[KnightWRX]

A DVD has a capacity of what? around 5 gigs? The future is clearly SSD and Apple will most assuredly make the leap to eliminate optical drives when they see fit and the rest of the world will follow shortly after.

Blu-ray has a capacity of 50 GB. DVD is 8 GB btw, for dual layers.

And the problem with flash memory on USB sticks is how to duplicate it. Mass pressing a CD/DVD takes less than a second per unit and costs pennies. Now ask yourselves, how do you write all that data to a thumb drive as fast and as cheap ?

Let's face it, optical media is superior to Flash memory for software/media distribution. Always will be. Now as for DLC, the problem is that it requires Internet connectivity. Currently, that broadband access is not up to par to provide everyone with streaming/downloads capable of what current optical media is. Blu-ray is 50 GB and well, my monthly download/upload cap is 100 GB. That's 2 disks per month. So either quality is going to have to suffer, or I am going to have to drive to the store to buy my movies. Guess which I'd pick ? Of course I'll take the drive, not to mention I get a nice backup on some good archival media.

 

[Laird Knox]

but everyone knows 4G is better than 3G.

We do?

 

[asdf542]

The only time I use my optical drive is to install Apple's own software. It's just a waste of space as far as I'm concerned. It's used far too infrequently to have it take up 1/4 or more space in a laptop. For those that do need it, you can buy an external one while everyone enjoys the added benefits of it being removed such as the possibility for thermal improvements for stronger parts or in the case of the 13" MacBook and MBP, discrete graphics or even a dual SSD/HDD setup or two HDD's setup in a RAID for the larger machines. Apple could use desktop GPU's in the iMac if they removed the optical drive.

 

[Yamcha]

I'm hoping we also see a redesign for iMacs, and also maybe a desktop keyboard with black keys that are also backlit, that would be pretty awesome..

 

[gnasher729]

I wouldn't expect them to drop the optical drive in the MBP. More realistic would be a slim form factor SSD (yeah the poor performing Toshiba) like the new MBA, an optional rotational HDD. This could work ok with an SSD 32-64GB for the OS and the rotational HDD for the rest of the junk we all store

I'm not touching an SSD until Micron & Intel hurry the fsck up and get those 25nm SSD Flash onto the market. Finally the market will have up to 600GB SSDs which shoal be large enough for some of us to not have to bother with a smaller OS SSD and a rotational disk. Random read/ write of 4kb files will hopefully be significantly improved in the new Intel controllers.

Apple could remove the optical drive, add a small sized SSD, and lots of additional battery on the right side. Then on the left side, configurable either a 2.5" hard drive or even more batteries. I'm not sure about the weight of batteries, but you could probably double the battery life + keep the same weight if you give up the hard drive and optical drive in the same size. Shrinking the MBP is not necessary, there is an MBA after all.

 

[Zauberer]

I kind of think the MBP rumors are only 30% likely to be true, but that's based purely on my gut. However, even though I would say I do need an optical drive, I definitely don't need it to be in the system since I don't use it all that frequently. If they switch to a SSD+HD for storage, for me, that would be an improvement.

I don't think battery life is really an issue for the MBP and I really don't want them focusing on improving that. 8-9 hours is really enough for most people. And assuming HyperMac works something out with Apple, if that isn't enough, then there are other solutions. Therefore, I really hope they utilize the extra space to improve cooling.

Personally, and I recognize this is likely under 50%, I'd like to see the MBP improve their graphics cards to something near high-end. Now that they have a dual graphic solution, a high end, power-hungry card doesn't really affect the battery life on-the-go. I would assume most people doing something graphic intensive have access to an outlet. I would encourage Apple to improve the power consumption on the integrated graphics and go all out on the secondary graphic card for intensive tasks.

 

[goobot]

LOL iPad not on january

 

[OllyW]

Shrinking the MBP is not necessary, there is an MBA after all.

Are you going to tell Jobs and Ive?

 

[asdf542]

Personally, and I recognize this is likely under 50%, I'd like to see the MBP improve their graphics cards to something near high-end. Now that they have a dual graphic solution, a high end, power-hungry card doesn't really affect the battery life on-the-go. I would assume most people doing something graphic intensive have access to an outlet. I would encourage Apple to improve the power consumption on the integrated graphics and go all out on the secondary graphic card for intensive tasks.

Apple has thermal limits in the MacBook Pro. They choose GPU's that fit in that range, ie. the 9600M and 330M have the same TDP. We'll have to see what they do with this extra optical drive space.

 

[catracho]

MicroSIM on the MacBook Pro? It´s possible?

 

[rtheb]

Plug in a superdrive when you need it. You shouldn't need it much.

Except the Mac External SuperDrive was proprietary to the MacBook Air and doesn't work on any other Mac/PC model without a hardware hack.

So in practical fact Apple has already eliminated External SuperDrives!

 

[anthonylambert]

MacBook Pro with 10Gb Light Peak interfaces?

In September 2010, some early LightPeak™ commercial prototypes from manufacturers were demonstrated at Intel Developer Forum 2010.

This would make a Mac Book Pro with LightPeak™ highly possible in this time frame - especially as Apple has said that it isn't going the USB3 route any-time soon.

see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light_Peak

 

[nrmillions]

Obviously they will remove optical drives from all their computers including the MacBook Pro and iMac. They want everyone to get their software from the Mac App Store and their media from iTunes.

 

[elppa]

Of course they exist. Problem is if I want to send a 9gb compile of my game to a colleague or tester what options do I have?

As it stands DVDs and blurays are still the best solution for me and my colleagues.

Fair enough, you've got me with that specific scenario.

I would argue most people don't compile games or software which results in 9GB binaries that need to be sent to testers and colleagues who are in other locations.

The big drawback of doing stuff over the network is of course the speed of the network. Things will improve though, but it will take time.

 

[URFloorMatt]

Let's turn back the clock to January 27, 2010:

Apple introduces the iPad for the first time to the world.



April 3, 2010: the iPad is released in the US.


Did you already forget that buddy?

Yeah, but what are iPad 1.0 sales going to look like during February and March if iPad 2.0 isn't coming until April again?

I would guess late February announcement for shipping in first week of March.

 

[asdf542]

Of course they exist. Problem is if I want to send a 9gb compile of my game to a colleague or tester what options do I have?

As it stands DVDs and blurays are still the best solution for me and my colleagues.

Great, so you buy an external drive for that one specific task while everyone else enjoys the added benefits of it being removed.

 

[MatthewStorm]

We do?

Eh, how could you not? Ever actually used a 4G device? My EVO is faster than my home DSL using wireless tether.